What is BILD? We are BILD!

by Christian Senft

In the summer of 2019, in a Germany-wide campaign titled “FÜR EUCH. BILD” (FOR YOU. BILD), BILD presented readers who impressed the editorial teams with their daily commitment to help others. Now, in addition to the campaign, “BILD. VON UNS.” (BILD. FROM US) presents the people who write and report every day as editors or on-site reporters, and who themselves are as diverse as life itself and the readers.

“While writing these lines, I am looking at the heartbreaking pictures of Brazil’s burning rainforest. The fires are so immense that they are visible from space. While writing these lines, an entire BILD team is getting ready to travel to this trouble spot of our planet and our future. Reporters, camera crew, photographers, presenters, equipment – the plane to Sao Paolo takes off at 10 p.m.”

This is how BILD editor-in-chief Julian Reichelt begins his article on the vonuns.bild.de website, where 26 colleagues ranging from trainee journalists to editor-in-chief, from the Politics to the Sports to the Entertainment sections, show their faces. They describe what it is that moves them, what it is they write about. And they document their journalistic work with the front pages, headlines and reports they stand for.

History will be our judge

“Journalism means writing history to a deadline, it has been said. History will be our judge, measuring up how we dealt with this epochal catastrophe,” says Julian Reichelt referring to the huge forest fires in the Amazon region. “How we as journalists reported, how much attention we paid, how unflinching we were in our reporting. Whether we generated enough attention to lead the word to act as one. Fire is eating away at our planet’s lung.”

For Reichelt, these are the moments “that make our profession what it is, make it so important. These are BILD’s moments. Without BILD, without our reporters’ eyes, the powerful would be able to ignore something so big it can be seen from space.”

Sensing what moves Germany, what moves the world

BILD, he adds, is always there “where history is happening live and where our future is being decided. It might be on the streets of our cities, on station squares or in open-air swimming pools. It might be in places where bombs are dropping, people are being murdered and where politicians look away with a sickening sense of ease. BILD does not describe the world as we want to see it, it describes the world the way it is. That’s the only way that stories can change the course of history.”

We are proud to be a house of reporters

“Our reporters sense what it is that moves Germany and the world. They see it with their own eyes, and they become witnesses to it every day. Where there are witnesses, no one can deny the truth. As long as there are reporters, nobody can just turn away, look in the other direction. We are proud to be a house of reporters. Reporters don’t say what they think first, they talk about what they see, about what they experience. The world would be blind without reporters. Without reporters, the fires of our times would never be extinguished. Without reporters, the world would have no memory. That’s BILD, that’s who we are.”

All 26 contributions from the colleagues in which they describe what it is about BILD that makes them proud, what it is they discuss passionately, what they stand up for and why BILD is the way it is and why it must be that way, can be found on vonuns.bild.de.